Conference Speakers

Conference Speakers

Keynote

Bill Evans

Chief Economist

Westpac Banking Corporation

William (Bill) H. Evans is a graduate of Sydney University (BEc. Hons I and University Medal) and the London School of Economics (M.Sc.), where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. He has worked as a Research Manager for the Reserve Bank of Australia, Treasurer at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and prior to joining Westpac in 1991, was Director and Head of Financial Markets at Schroders Australia Limited for 8 years.

Bill joined Westpac in 1991 in the position of Chief Economist and Head of Research. During his time at Westpac he has also spent 2 years in New Zealand as Head of the Institutional Bank with responsibility for Westpac’s corporate and financial markets businesses.

He is currently Managing Director Economics. He is the Bank’s economic spokesman and is responsible for all of the Bank’s economic research. Bill travels frequently, advising Westpac’s customers on the Australian economy and financial markets. He has developed many important contacts in the U.S, Europe and Asia.

Bill was Chairman of the Australian Business Economists for eight years and is now a life member.

Speakers

Stuart Anderson

Director - Trading and Liquidity Strategy Group

BlackRock

Stuart Anderson, Director, is a member of the Transition Management team within BlackRock's Trading and Liquidity Strategies Group.

The Transition Management team is responsible for providing risk managed solutions to institutional investors undergoing portfolio reorganisations in multiple asset classes. In his role, Mr. Anderson oversees the design and implementation of transitions for clients across the Australasian region.

Prior to relocating to Sydney in 2016, Mr. Anderson was based in London where he oversaw the implementation of EMIR as part of BlackRock’s e-Trading and Market Structure team.

Henrik Andersson

Chief Investment Officer

Apollo Capital

Henrik is the co-founder and CIO of Apollo Capital, Australia’s premier crypto fund. Henrik has over 17 years of experience in global financial markets, with almost a decade on Wall Street. Henrik has extensive experience across three continents as a quantitative analyst, senior research analyst and in institutional equity sales. Henrik holds a Master of Science in engineering physics from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and a Master of Science in business administration and economics from Stockholm University. He is a CFA charterholder.

Michael Blayney

Head of Multi Asset, Multi Asset Investments

BT Investment Management

Michael joined BTIM in August 2017 and leads the Multi Asset Investments team. Michael has over 20 years’ investment management and consulting experience and joined BTIM from First State Super, where he was Head of Investment Strategy since January 2014. In this role, Michael was responsible for the establishment of an active asset allocation process and led the Fund’s Investment Strategy Team. Prior to this appointment, Michael was Head of Diversified Strategies at Perpetual for over five years, with portfolio management responsibilities for the manager’s range of diversified funds. Michael’s prior experience includes over 10 years in consulting roles at Watson Wyatt (now Willis Towers Watson) and NSP Buck.

Michael Blythe

Chief Economist, Managing Director of Economics

Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Michael is the Chief Economist and Managing Director of Economics at the Commonwealth Bank. His extensive experience as an economist reflects more than thirty years working in economic policy and financial-market-related areas.

Michael’s role encompasses monitoring, analysing and forecasting trends in the Australian economy and financial markets. In addition, he prepares a wide range of research material on matters of current interest. In his capacity as the CBA’s Chief Economist, he is a regular conference presenter and media commentator on major economic developments and themes. Michael and his team have consistently ranked in the top three for macroeconomic analysis advice in various industry polls.

Michael works in the Institutional Banking & Markets division of the Commonwealth Bank. This division is responsible for managing the Group’s relationships with major corporate, institutional and government clients and providing a full range of capital raising, transactional and risk management products and services.

After graduating in economics from the University of Sydney in 1982, he spent a total of 13 years in various roles within the Economic Group of the Reserve Bank of Australia. This included a stint at the International Monetary Fund in 1988. Key features of these roles involved the provision of economic analysis and policy advice.

Michael joined the Commonwealth Bank in late 1995.

Elliot Clarke

Director, Senior Economist

Westpac Institutional Bank

Elliot Clarke, Director and Senior Economist, has been with Westpac Economics for over eight years having previously worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia analysing developments in Asia and global financial markets. At Westpac, he is responsible for the team’s analysis of the US, Europe and China as well as international investment and financial markets. Elliot holds an honours degree in economics, a Masters of Applied Finance and is also a CFA Charterholder.

Ric Deverell

Chief Economist, Head of Macro Research

Macquarie Group

Ric was appointed Chief Economist and Head of Macro Research for Macquarie Group Limited in August 2017. With over 25 years of experience analysing the global economy and financial markets, Ric joined Macquarie from Credit Suisse in New York, where he was Managing Director and Global Head of Fixed Income and Economic Research. During the 2000s, Ric worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia, where he held several senior positions including Deputy Head of the Economic Analysis department and Chief Manager International Markets and Relations. He ran the Reserve Bank of Australia’s business liaison program during the Great Recession and was Governor Stevens’ G-20 Sherpa during Australia’s host year in 2006. Ric spent the 1990s working in Government, first with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and then with the Australian Treasury. He headed the Treasury’s Asia section during the Asian Financial Crisis. With a broad range of expertise and relationships across global economics, commodities, fixed income, foreign exchange, emerging markets, equity and credit markets, Ric provides an important perspective to analysing the challenges global economies currently face.

Peter Duff

With over 30 years in Financial Markets (the past nearly 22 years at CBA), Peter has a broad product skill set within Interest Rate and Foreign Exchange markets. Much of this time has been running trading books in a number of currencies in these markets, with the last 20 years focused on derivatives markets - especially interest rate and cross currency swaps. More recently, over the past 5 years Peter has been involved in the setup and running of CBA’s OTC Clearing business at both ASX and LCH, and currently sits on the SwapClear Default Management Group at LCH. He has also been involved in Project teams tasked at implementation of Regulatory Variation Margin at CBA, and currently implementation of bi-lateral Initial Margin for uncleared derivatives due for CBA on 1st Sept this year.

John Feeney

Head of Conduct (C&IB)

National Australia Bank

John Feeney is the Head of Conduct (C&IB) at National Australia Bank Limited (NAB). He has been in financial markets for over 30 years in trading and management roles across most asset classes. Prior to joining NAB, Mr. Feeney has worked for Commonwealth Bank in Sydney, Citi in Sydney and London and Macquarie Bank in Sydney. Over this time he has traded and managed interest rate derivate, foreign exchange, traded credit, commodities and funding businesses. Currently, Mr. Feeney is an ISDA Board Member and an AFMA Board member.

Robert Fievez

Independent Consultant

Robert is Melbourne based with over 10 years’ experience in Government and Financial Markets specialising in broad scope regulatory change. His most recent experience was with one of the Big Four banks as delivery lead for CPS226 rules which included an end-to-end solution for uncleared margin compliance which required large scale people, infrastructure and process change. In addition, Robert implemented and managed that bank’s OTC Clearing globally, overseeing all internal and external relationships including clearing houses and vendors. Robert was that bank's delegate on clearing and uncleared margin to local (APRA and RBA) and overseas (US Federal Reserve, Japanese Financial Services Agency, etc.) regulators.

Andrew Fisher

Head of Asset Allocation

Sunsuper

Andrew joined Sunsuper in 2010 and is responsible for managing investment strategy and asset allocation. His recent experience has included roles with the Guardians of NZ Superannuation as an investment strategist and with Milliman as a consultant. Andrew has over 15 years of experience in the investment industry and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries, Australia.

Sarah Harris

Deputy Head of Payments Policy Department

Reserve Bank of Australia

Sarah Harris is Deputy Head of Payments Policy Department at the Reserve Bank of Australia, with responsibility for the Reserve Bank’s oversight of payments, clearing and settlement systems and associated policy and research. Sarah’s team also has responsibility for contributing to international policy making and inter-agency efforts to ensure that Australia’s regulatory framework for over-the-counter derivatives is best practice. In addition to this, she contributes to the Reserve Bank’s work in the development and implementation of resolution, recovery and other crisis management policies relating to financial market infrastructure. She is a member of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure (CPMI) and CPMI and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) Steering Group. Sarah joined the Reserve Bank in 2012 and has held a number of roles in Payments Policy including leading the team that developed the current Reserve Bank standards for clearing and settlement systems in Australia. Prior to that, she worked at the UK Financial Services Authority for over 13 years, including stints running the clearing and settlement supervision team and working in the banking and market divisions.

Nick Horn

Senior Financial Risk Advisor — Stress Testing

Suncorp Group

Nick Horn joined Suncorp Group in August 2016 as Senior Financial Risk Adviser, providing advice on investment assets, capital, and liquidity as it applies to stress testing. Prior to this, Nick spent 6 years at QIC, departing as Manager of the Independent Investment Risk and Compliance function. At QIC, he co-led the business response to global derivative reforms. Nick has been an active adviser to regulators and industry associations on the design and impacts of derivative reform. His prior roles include Asset and Liability Management Specialist, Fund of Fund Equity Portfolio Manager, Derivatives Trader, and Financial Advisor.

Peter Jolly

Global Head of Research

National Australia Bank

Peter is Global Head of Research in the Global Markets area of National Australia Bank. His team has specialist researchers across the world covering different economies, interest rate, and currency markets. Peter has worked as an economist and researcher for more than two decades, starting out with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Peter is an Adjunct Fellow at Macquarie University’s Applied Finance school and has a Masters Degree in Economics from the University of London.

In his current role as the Chief Compliance Officer for Optiver in the Asia-Pacific region with responsibility for the establishment of the compliance framework covering Optiver Asia Pacific’s activities across the markets in which it operates.

Anatoly has been an adjunct academic at the University of New South Wales since 2000 across undergraduate, masters and MBA programs, with a focus on risk management and corporate governance. He taught extensively across financial markets & institutions, international business finance, real estate finance, corporate governance and risk management for financial institutions.

Mark Naisbitt

CEO

MNC LIMITED

Mark Naisbitt is a banking and financial services consultant specialising in Trading / Risk system implementations and OTC Derivative reform.

Mark has just left HSBC in Hong Kong where he was responsible for the OTC Derivative product and successful implementation of a Calypso Client Clearing platform. Mark also represented HSBC on the User Committee of HKEx OTC Clear as well as managing relationships with LCH, CME, SGX and JSCC.

Previously Mark led a number of major programmes / projects including new exchange memberships at LCH, JSCC and HKEx. Mark also led the launch of Brevan Howard, as well as major programmes at organisations like European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (London), Merrill Lynch (New York), The World Bank (Washington DC), HKEx (Hong Kong) and SGX (Singapore). He has extensive experience with multiple system vendors including Calypso, Murex and Finastra.

Having worked in in the UK, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia Mark have extensive experience of multiple business cultures.

Campbell Nicoll

Chief Risk Officer

Regional Australia Bank

Campbell Nicoll is the chief risk officer at Regional Australia Bank, having over 15 years of experience in both credit risk management and operational risk management. Campbell brings a balanced approach to risk management given his background in both risk management and corporate banking. Prior to his role at Regional Australia Bank, Campbell's roles within the financial sector includes general manager positions at ASB Bank (New Zealand) and the CRO role at the Bank of South Pacific (Fiji).

Dr Matthew Peter

Chief Economist

QIC

Matthew is Chief Economist for QIC, one of Australia’s largest institutional funds managers, where he oversees global economic forecasting and research.

Matthew previously worked with fund manager TGM, where he headed the economic and financial-market forecasting team.

Prior to joining TGM, Matthew was Senior Research Fellow at Monash University. Here, he led the development of a regional model of the Australian economy. This model is widely used by Federal and State Government agencies and by most large consultancy firms.

Matthew and his team are among Australia’s top forecasters as ranked by Bloomberg.

Matthew is a CEDA Trustee, an American Chamber of Commerce Governor and is frequent commentator at industry forums and in the press.

He has 20 years of economic modelling experience in both industry and academia, and holds a PhD in economics from Monash University.

Anouk Pinchetti

Blockchain Educator and Business Strategy Consultant

Anouk Pinchetti is a Blockchain Educator and Business Strategy Consultant. Leading workshops and consulting on the application of distributed technology to a range of corporate and community currency issues. Anouk regularly advises blockchain projects, corporate and government departments on the application of Blockchain Technology, speaking to communities and at conferences around Australia and abroad. Before blockchain, Anouk has had a background in disciplines ranging from network administration to software development to business analysis, service delivery management and project management. A broad researcher and activist in the community currencies space since the '90s.

Filippo Santilli

Managing Director, APAC Head of Liquidity and Segregation

BNY Mellon Hong Kong

Marcus Robinson

Asia Pacific Head of Rates & FX Derivatives

LCH

Marcus Robinson is the Asia Pacific Head of Rates & FX Derivatives who is responsible for overseeing the strategy and business operations of the interest rates and FX clearing services, as well as more broadly developing LCH's presence in Asia-Pacific. Marcus has previously led a number of regulatory and strategic initiatives at SwapClear, including the update of the service's membership criteria, default fund and default management process. Marcus also played a key role in the design and implementation of LCH's NDF service, ForexClear. Prior to joining LCH, Marcus worked for JP Morgan in its investment banking and asset management divisions.

Chris Van Homrigh

Up until June 2016 Chris was ASIC's Regional Commissioner for New South Wales and head of its investment banks team covering investment banks, hedge and private equity funds, retail derivatives, retail structured products, and credit ratings agencies. Chris was a member of ASIC's Audit Committee, and chaired or was a member of a number of ASIC's Project Boards and Steering Committees.

At ASIC amongst other things, Chris initiated and led ASIC's work on conduct - work which described by the then Chair of the Australian Financial Markets Association as "world leading".

Prior to joining ASIC, Chris had a wealth of international and domestic experience primarily in debt markets. Chris spent 10 years with Société Générale and was its Managing Director and Head of Securitisation for Asia Pacific. Chris established Société Générale's securitisation business in Canada after having been head of the North Asian business based in Japan.

Chris spent the 10 years prior to Société Générale with Citibank mainly in the securitisation and structured finance markets, and before joining Citi spent 5 years working in chartered accounting firms in Australia and England.

Having worked in in the UK, Japan, Canada and Australia and for Australian, French, and US institutions gives Chris an understanding of the cultural nuisances that may impact conduct.

As such Chris's experience has put him in a unique position to globally view conduct and culture from a regulator's perspective, but with the understanding of issues from a business leaders' perspective.

Karl Wyborn

Karl is Managing Director, Global Head of Sales for CloudMargin, the first web-based collateral and margin management solution and winner of more than a dozen awards for its innovation and best-in-class technology. With an extensive background in the non-cleared OTC derivatives industry, Karl joined CloudMargin in September 2015, heading the firm’s sales and business development initiatives globally.

Karl previously worked at JPMorgan Chase for 18 years in both London and Hong Kong, where he held regional and global sales roles in the collateral management and clearing businesses.

Narayanan Somasundaram

Hong Kong Bureau Chief

RISK.NET

Narayanan Somasundaram is the Hong Kong Bureau Chief for Risk.net. He has been a journalist for more than 15 years, with his career spanning news and features for two of the world’s largest news organisations – Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg.

Narayanan led coverage of Australian financial services, regulation and the frothy real estate market with a series of features that underscored the build-up of risk in the nation’s property market.

He has also had stints as a mergers and acquisitions reporter both in Mumbai and Sydney and as a foreign exchange and bonds reporter in Sydney, where he kicked off coverage of global markets amid Brexit and the shock US election win for Donald Trump.

Workshop Speakers

Owen Deane

Senior Manager, Market and Liquidity Risk

AMP Bank

Currently leading the market and liquidity risk function for AMP Bank, Owen has a broad range of experience across financial markets. After qualifying as a CPA in Australia in 1998, Owen worked as a financial accountant in London before settling in New York. He spent 7 years with Swiss Re as a Vice President in interest rate derivatives and become a CFA charter holder in 2005. On return to Australia in 2008 Owen spent 3 years in Treasury at Macquarie Bank managing interest rate risk for the Banking and Financial Services division as well as implementing an asset liability management system. In 2011 he moved to CBA as a lead modeller for the Bank’s LCR project and ran liquidity stress testing.

Graham has more than 25 years of Treasury experience including with the National Australia Bank, HSBC Bank, Fonterra and Greater Bank and has extensive expertise in both purchasing and issuing secured and unsecured debt issuances, public and private placements and interest rate risk management techniques.

Rahul Kale

Managing Director

Sedna Business Consultants

Rahul is the Managing Director of Sedna Business Consultants, a boutique advisory firm that provides consultancy and analytic services, with core competencies in Finance, Risk & Treasury.

Rahul, alumni of Monash University, Australia has almost two decades of experience in the banking and finance industry, and has held senior leadership positions in leading financial institutions across Asia Pacific. He has a strong consultancy background and was on the Risk

Management Leadership programme with GE Money, Australia before moving to a consultancy firm in Singapore where he managed the firm’s expansion into Asia.

Rahul is an expert in Balance Sheet Management and Optimisation and a subject matter expert in stress testing, balance sheet analytics, policy governance and ALM. As Head of Balance sheet optimisation at Standard Chartered Bank, he drove the bank’s balance sheet review and

optimisation initiatives to deliver tangible benefits to the banks RoE. He has the unique perspective of knowing both sides of the balance sheet and is a big proponent of holistic balance sheet management covering Capital and Liquidity. He has led teams in performing balance sheet analytics and delivering deal level advisory to front line business teams. Most recently, Rahul headed the Liquidity management and stress testing function focusing on policy, analytics, governance, and optimisation of the bank’s short term liquidity ensuring liquidity buffers are adequate and optimised under stress conditions.

Rahul has in depth knowledge on banking regulation and his experience in regulatory management has led to his close engagement with regulators across Asia Pacific. He has written and presented papers on banking regulation and its impact on banks and businesses, and works closely with industry bodies like BAFT-IFSA, IIF and ICC. Rahul was the Asia liaison for BAFT where he covered the industry engagement and collaboration of Asian banks on key issues impacting the Transaction Banking business. He is regularly invited to speak at conferences on treasury and balance sheet related topics, and is an experienced trainer with Risk.net and other training organisations.

Over the last 20 years as a banker working throughout Asia pacific, Rahul has developed a sharp business acumen and ability to assess risk and work at a strategic level. He possesses strong leadership qualities, excellent interpersonal skills and multicultural awareness, and has a proven track record in shaping business strategy and organizing the business to deliver optimal value through its day to day operations. He is Six Sigma Green belt certified and specialises in business transformation and driving process and system efficiencies in the organisation.

Peter Yue

ALM Expert

Mr Peter Yue is currently the Head of Policy, Analytics and Supervisory, Asset Liability Management - Risk at OCBC Bank. Mr Yue has 17 years of Treasury and Asset Liability Management experience.

Before joining OCBC Bank, Mr Yue was the Head of Liquidity Management of the Asia Pacific region and Treasurer of Singapore at Deutsche Bank.